SpockAdb

Introduction: Spock Adb Plugin Helps you to have full control of your project

Tags:

Android debugging without leaving the IDE

Inspect, control, and debug your Android app and device directly from Android Studio or IntelliJ IDEA — without constantly switching to the terminal, Device Manager, Settings, or external tools.

Spock ADB brings ADB workflows into the IDE and keeps one selected device and app as the active target across Home, Storage, Work, Shell, Logcat, the Debug Timeline, Diagnose and the UI Inspector — plus a built-in MCP server exposing 69 strongly typed Android tools for Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, and other AI clients.

One IDE · One device target · Fewer ADB commands

Install from JetBrains Marketplace · View Documentation

Spock ADB in Android Studio: Spock Screen and Spock ADB on the left, Spock Logcat at the bottom, device, app and MCP state in the status bar

Stop jumping between tools

A normal Android debugging session can quickly become:

Android Studio → Terminal → adb → Logcat → Device Settings → back to Android Studio

Spock ADB brings those workflows into the IDE and keeps one selected device + app as the target of everything it does. It is laid out by what each part is for:

Status bar — the device and app every Spock surface acts on (it follows Android Studio's run target by default), and whether the MCP server is on.
Spock ADB (left) — Home (the app, the screen it is on, its permissions, device controls), Storage, Scheduler and Shell.
Spock Logcat (bottom) — the app's log and the Debug Timeline, beside the actions that produce them.
Spock Screen (left, above Spock ADB) — Diagnose and the UI Tree of the screen in front of you.
⚡ Spock Actions (main toolbar) — every action, searchable, with pins and recents; bind it to a shortcut in the keymap.

Spock ADB: Spock Screen and Spock ADB Home on the left, Spock Logcat at the bottom, device, app and MCP state in the status bar

Spock ADB Home: the screen it is on, the app and its lifecycle toolbar Spock Actions popup with pinned and all actions

Spock Logcat's Timeline tab

Task	Without Spock ADB	With Spock ADB
Find current Activity	`adb shell dumpsys...` + search output	Open Current Activity
Find current Fragment	dumpsys / debug code / manual inspection	Open Current Fragment
Restart / force stop	Terminal ADB commands	One action
Test process death	Manual ADB commands	One action
Manage permissions	`pm grant` / `pm revoke`	Visual permission controls
Inspect SharedPreferences	`run-as` + shell + file editing	Browse & edit directly
Inspect DataStore	Pull/read files manually	Built-in typed editor
App-only Logcat	Find PID + build filters	App scope automatically
Investigate crashes / ANRs	grep/filter Logcat manually	Built-in filters
Inspect background work	Read large `dumpsys` job/alarm output	Jobs and alarms in tables
Inspect UI hierarchy	`uiautomator dump` + XML inspection	Visual UI Inspector
Check accessibility	Manual inspection	Built-in accessibility checks
Send a deep link	`adb shell am start ...`	Open Deep Link
Send a test push message	web console, token, payload form	Push message → Compose…
Change HTTP proxy	`settings put/get ...`	Proxy controls + verification
Run ADB commands	Leave the IDE for Terminal	ADB Command Center
Give AI access to Android	Custom scripts / shell access	Structured MCP tools

The result

Workflows that normally require several commands, copy/paste operations, PID lookups, and context switches become one or two actions without leaving your editor.

Everything you need for Android debugging

🏠 Home: the app, its screen and the device

The first tab of the Spock ADB window answers the questions you would otherwise run a command for, and puts the actions you use most in one row.

This screen — the resumed activity and the app's fragments, read live, as links to their source; Diagnose, and Copy screen for AI, which diagnoses and copies the redacted report in one click. App back stack lists the app's activities top first, each with its state and the fragments it holds; All activities shows every task on the device.
App — version, process and UID, with Restart, Attach debugger, Force stop and Process death in a toolbar. Clear cache, Clear data and Uninstall sit behind ⋯, never one click from Restart. Links jump to the Debug timeline and Background work.
Permissions — how many are granted, with Manage…, Grant all and Revoke all….
Send to app — text input, deep links and push messages.
Device — Wi-Fi and mobile data, HTTP proxy, and developer options (Don't keep activities, Show taps, layout bounds, animation scales), which start hidden on a fresh install. Folded until you need it.

The device and app it acts on are the ones in the status bar: they follow Android Studio's run target by default, and a click changes them for every Spock window at once.

Spock ADB Home: current screen, app, permissions and Send to app App back stack: the app's activities top first, each with its state and the fragments under it

🔔 Push messages

Home › Device › Push message → Compose… sends a test FCM message straight to the app's messaging receiver over ADB — no web console, no registration token. Add data pairs, or a title and body for a notification message; paste an FCM request or edit it as JSON; save payloads per project; send to one device or all of them. The result says, per device, whether the message was accepted or refused.

Send Push Message editor: title, body, data pairs, target device and the accepted result The notification the sample app shows for the pushed message

🗂 App Storage

Inspect your app's private storage directly from the IDE.

Browse:

shared_prefs/ · files/ · databases/ · cache/ · DataStore

Edit supported SharedPreferences and Preferences DataStore values using typed fields instead of manipulating files through adb shell run-as.

Changes are checked, written, and read back instead of assuming the command worked.

App storage browser

📜 Logcat, without the noise

Spock Logcat docks at the bottom of the IDE, beside the actions that produce the log, and starts with the selected app, not the entire device.

Choose the scope you actually need:

App — only your application's processes Related — your app + relevant Android system components All — the full device log

Then narrow it further with:

Errors · Crashes · ANRs · Network · Search · Regex

No manual PID lookup. No giant adb logcat | grep ... commands.

Spock Logcat streaming the selected app, with a log line open in the details pane

⌨️ Shell

Still need the shell? The Shell tab of the Spock ADB window is an ADB command center.

Run ADB commands inside the IDE with:

Autocomplete with docs · Device targeting · History · Favourites · Timeout · Cancellation · Searchable output · Execution status

Start typing and Spock suggests what comes next — commands, subcommands, flags, key codes and the device's installed packages — with the usage and a one-line explanation of each one, so you no longer have to remember whether it was pm clear or am clear. ↑/↓ to choose, Tab to insert, Ctrl+Space or Alt/Option+Space to ask, Esc to close. Enter inserts a suggestion you picked with the arrows, or the best match of a word you are still typing; once a word is typed in full, Enter runs the command.

You keep the power of ADB without constantly opening another terminal.

The Shell tab: adb shell command, history, favourites and output

🩺 Diagnose Current Screen

Spock Screen › Diagnose — or Diagnose and Copy screen for AI on Home — reads everything about the screen in front of you, for the selected device and app:

Current activity, activity stack and fragments · Screenshot · Likely problems from Logcat · UI and accessibility summary · Process state · Runtime permissions · Jobs and alarms · Doze, standby bucket, battery and charger

Problems come first, ranked; a part that cannot be read is reported in place and never costs you the rest. From the summary go straight to Open Activity, Open Fragment, Inspect UI or View Related Logs, or Copy for AI. Agents get the same report from android_diagnose_current_screen.

Spock Screen › Diagnose: likely problems first, then screen, process, logs, UI, permissions, background work and device state

🕒 Debug Timeline

Spock Logcat › Timeline — what happened just before the bug, in one list and on one clock:

Activity lifecycle and fragments · Process starts, deaths, crashes and ANRs · The app's warnings and errors · Actions run from Spock · Storage writes, jobs run and device-condition changes · Devices connecting · Agent tool calls · Your own markers

Filter by category and severity, select an event for its detail and the tab it came from, and select two events to Copy Range or Export everything between them into a bug report. Device log times are moved onto the host's clock with a measured offset, so an action and the log line it caused appear in the order they happened. The history is bounded and says when the oldest events were dropped. Agents read the same list with android_get_debug_timeline.

Spock Logcat › Timeline: lifecycle, actions, a crash with its detail, and the process restarting

🔍 UI Tree

Spock Screen › UI Tree inspects the UI currently running on the device.

Supports:

Android Views · Jetpack Compose · Hybrid screens

Inspect text, content descriptions, bounds, test tags, interaction state, and other semantics — with sizes in dp, whether each element is actually in view, and which device, window and moment the capture came from.

Select an element to copy a selector for it — MCP arguments, a Compose test finder, or a UI Automator selector — checked against the captured screen, so one that would match several elements says so before you paste it.

Jump to Source opens the code that drew the selected element, found in the open project by its test tag, resource id, text, or View class.

Recompositions records a Compose app for a few seconds and lists how many times each composable composed or recomposed, with its source line, from Compose's own composition tracing. The app needs androidx.compose.runtime:runtime-tracing and androidx.tracing:tracing-perfetto-binary in its debug build.

Spock ADB can also detect common accessibility problems such as:

Missing labels · Duplicate labels · Touch targets below 48dp

Spock Screen › UI Tree: a Compose screen with an element selected — its unique selector, copy-as links and Jump to Source

⏱ Scheduler

The Scheduler tab shows what's actually scheduled to run on the device.

Inspect:

Scheduled jobs (JobScheduler & WorkManager) · Pending alarms

Run a supported job on demand instead of waiting for the system to trigger it, and inspect — with a reset — the device conditions that gate background work:

Doze · App Standby buckets · Battery level (presets or slider) · Per-charger AC/USB/wireless toggles

Scheduler: scheduled jobs, alarms, and device conditions — Doze, standby buckets, battery level presets and slider, per-charger toggles

⚡ Spock Actions

Every Spock ADB action in one searchable popup, from the main toolbar or a shortcut you bind in the keymap: your pinned actions first, then the last five you used, then all of them — restart, clear data, process death, the developer-option toggles, open a deep link, send text, copy the screen for AI. They act on the device and app in the status bar, with every tool window closed.

Spock Actions popup: pinned, recent and all actions

🤖 Android debugging for AI agents

Spock ADB includes a built-in MCP server for tools such as Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, and other MCP clients.

Instead of giving an AI agent unrestricted shell access, Spock ADB exposes 69 structured Android debugging tools.

Agents can inspect things such as:

Activity · Fragment · UI tree · Logcat · Screenshots · Storage · Background work · Device state

and perform actions such as:

Launch · Tap · Input text · Deep links · App lifecycle operations

Element actions refuse to guess between look-alike targets, can wait for the screen to change instead of sleeping, and can check that a tap had the effect it should — without ever sending it twice.

Sensitive or destructive operations can require approval, and MCP activity remains visible inside the IDE. The status bar shows the server's state — a green dot while it runs, amber when an agent is driving a different device from the one you selected — and a click starts or stops it, connects a client, or opens the agent activity.

MCP server tab: running, the last client, and each agent call with its access level, result and duration

See MCP documentation for setup, the complete tool list, and safety details.

To teach an agent which tools to call and in what order, install the Spock ADB Agent Skill: debugging playbooks for UI bugs, state bugs, crashes and ANRs, process death, background work, deep links and accessibility.

Why use Spock ADB?

Without Spock

Android Studio ↓ Terminal ↓ Find the device ↓ Find the package ↓ Remember the ADB command ↓ Parse the output ↓ Switch back to the IDE

With Spock

Android Studio ↓ Select device + app ↓ Run the action

Built for real debugging workflows

Spock ADB isn't an ADB command cheat sheet.

It provides a shared debugging workspace where Home, Storage, Work, Shell, Logcat, Timeline, Diagnose, UI Inspector and MCP all use the same selected Android device and application.

That means less setup, fewer targeting mistakes, and less time spent fighting your tools.

Get started

Install Spock ADB from the JetBrains Marketplace.
Connect a device or start an emulator.
Open the Spock ADB tool window.
Check the device and app in the status bar — Spock ADB picks your project's app and follows Android Studio's device; click it to choose another.
Debug.

No Android project handy? ./gradlew -p sample :app:installDebug builds the bundled sample app — every plugin feature has a labeled screen to try it against.

Spend less time operating ADB. Spend more time debugging your app.